DISINTERMEDIATION. Isn’t that one of the ugliest words you’ve encountered in a long while?

I heard it first this week from Paxman’s lips during a Newsnight special investigating, or rather questioning, the future of newspapers.

Disintermediation is, it seems, the greatest threat facing print. It means “cutting out the middle man”. The idea/threat/reality is that people get their news when they want it and how they want it. Disintermediation, I guess, means cutting out us, me. It means going straight to Google and getting what you want – for free.

The BBC, of course, doesn’t help because the Beeb, our beloved Auntie, with its broadcasting pedigree, has made a decision to target the online news market. And as it can do so without shouldering the same commercial pressures faced by the rest of the media it skews the playing field.

Maybe not strictly disintermediation but, you may agree, not Strictly Come Cricket either.

Husb though scoffs at the fact I’ve never before heard the phrase.

I retort in the best way I can – childishly. “It’s still an ugly phrase,” I say. “It’s not a phrase,” he corrects. “It’s a word.” Honestly. You can SO go off people.

Still, there is a case to be made for disintermediation. It was made enthusiastically at the recent London Welsh v Nottingham clash. The Welsh had appeared to have the match in the bag, easily out-classing the visitors with confident passing, good line-running and a scoreline with a comfortable margin for error. But not comfortable enough for two errors... two interception tries later for Nottingham and the Welsh’s future looked as bleak as that predicted by Newsnight for newspapers.

There was a possibility that a decision might be reversed and then the middle man decided against it. He blew his whistle, shook his head, ‘no.’ This was too much for the lusty, hoarse-voiced supporter two rows behind. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO?” she bellowed.

Everyone laughed, but she did have a point. Disintermediation and it might have gone our way.

Husb, meanwhile, mentioned on his way to work yesterday that he was “running low on shirts and could also do with some shaving foam, face wash, not the exfoliating kind and some deodorant.”

This morning he grumbled in what he assumed was an amusing way that, “Daddy would have to go to work smelly today because he still didn’t have any shaving foam, face wash or deodorant.”